Sunday, March 23, 2008

99%

My recovery and moving forward with my training has gone very well the past couple weeks. I have had some leftover pain in my left knee on and off but it hasn't really bothered me at all in 5 days. My ankle is completely recovered. My training is back to almost a full load. Right now for the past week I've put in just over 20 hours, with almost 150 miles of biking and just over 40 miles of running. All in all I would say that I am 99% recovered from the Ultrasport and moving quickly forward.

My training plan is to put in another 10 days or so similar to my past couple weeks. That is trying to ride my bike most everyday and run about 2 out of every three days. And then in early April I will begin to really focus on getting some quality runs in. Some speed, some hills, and some decent distance runs. With all that I will need to cut my biking time back so I will also at that time begin to get more quality (as opposed to quantity) time on the bike, that is I will actually begin biking hard and more focused, whereas the 325 miles I've put in on the bike in the past 18 days has all been slow and steady, just getting comfortable with being on the bike everyday again. In April my focus will be much more on running to get sharpened for the Miwok but with the GDR less than 3 months away now I'm going to try to keep any kind of momentum I can on the bike.

And then as soon as I'm done with the Miwok (May 3rd) I'll be spending almost all of my training time on the bike. The month of May should see me pedaling over 1,000+ miles of desert roads and trails. There are so many places I have in mind that I want to explore in Southern Utah that my aim will be for almost every one of these miles to be on a new trail or road than any of the miles previous. I can't even begin to explain the excitement I have for my training in May. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those summers that I will always think back to with much fondness and nostalgia.